Akgül Baylav

Akgül Baylav was born in Turkey in 1945 and came to London in 1983, having previously lived in London as a student. She talks about a campaign in the 1980s to send cards to women in prison in Turkey. 

Listen to Akgül (mp3, 1.1mb)

Transcript

'Another activity of that particular solidarity committee was to get cards to show solidarity with women prisoners in Turkey. Again hundreds of cards have been signed and sent to Turkey prisons. The women may not have received them personally, but the authorities knew that there are some people out there who know about the plight of these women. 

'One of them sent us a letter, in which she wrote about one of her experiences when she was still in prison. She wrote to us after she had been released.

'What she wrote was like this, one day they were in the ward in the prison and just very demoralised… Some of them were injured through tortures, all of them were in a very, very bad shape. And one night she could not sleep, she lost her sleep, and she was just lying in bed. The little hole on the door opened, something dropped on the floor, and then closed again. She was curious.

'She got up, she saw what was dropped on the floor: it was a card signed by a number of women from England. And in English. And she--, they could not read much English but she woke everybody up, they all woke up, they were, they deciphered this card - it said hang on in there, we know about you, we think about you, and all our love, and all our support is with you.

'And then she writes about this in her letter, that that card, these two cards changed their world immediately, immediately, and they were so happy, so jubilant, knowing that some people out there knew about them, supported them. And then they celebrated the 8th of March [International Women’s Day], believe me that was their impetus to get on with their life and to think that, to really collect themselves and get on with it…

'At that time my own sister was in prison, can you believe, so everything we did for other women, we did also for her. And it was just a mad time, a very, very dark time in our history.'

Copyright Evelyn Oldfield Unit